And obviously to achieve such performance, the designers must have been more creative in their interpretation of the rules

Red Bull may claim that they have not violated any particular rule but collectively they have otherwise their dominance would not exist.

Sometimes the car is just a very good car – with a good philosophy, and a refined design. It’s not a “must be” thing. I’m not saying the Red Bull is completely legal – but your blanket statement is untrue.

It’s like you’re saying, “The valedictorian must have cheated, otherwise she wouldn’t have a 4.0 GPA”

I for one personally don’t like this type of racing where the designers can dictate the outcome of the championship more than the driver or the engine manufacturers

When has F1 not been about chassis? (Pre-aero years notwithstanding)

Would it be incorrect to say that Red Bull and its drivers have been penalized the least given the number of incidents and loopholes they have exploited over the past 2 years?

penalised over what though? Red Bull have used loopholes. Loopholes are 100% legal.

It’s like your teacher sets you a rule “Don’t use Google.” Well – you used Yahoo. That doesn’t go against your teacher’s rule, and you’ve complied 100% to what the teacher said. That’s a loophole. Or should you be penalised for using Yahoo?

I’ve read all the posts in this thread, and honestly I feel such an unhealthy bias from some users (whom I’m not naming) that it is not even worth it to reply to them. But, one thing I don’t understand is, why suddenly a team being clever is a bad thing? Do you guys think that Red Bull is the only team exploiting loopholes? Do you think HRT wouldn’t do it if they could? If one day Tim Goss comes to Martin Whitmarsh saying “Here old chum, I created this device that will give us 5 seconds per lap. It is perfectly within the wording of the rules, but it kind of goes against the spirit of it”, do you think Martin would reply “Thank you good sir, but we must not go against the spirit of the rules!”? If you think a loophole is illegal, then I suggest you look for the meaning of the word. Have you guys any idea how stupid the FIA would look if they penalized teams for things that aren’t even offenses? The teams could potentially bring the case to a EU court, and would most likely win it.

What I don’t think many of you guys who are complaining are getting is that this is a competition, every team hires hundreds of professionals, paid and driven to extract the last drop of performance, and to do so they must drive the wording of the regulations to the limit. Every team is doing it. Red Bull is just being flat out better at the deal at the moment. Stop being so naive.

Sometimes the car is just a very good car – with a good philosophy, and a refined design. It’s not a “must be” thing. I’m not saying the Red Bull is completely legal – but your blanket statement is untrue.

When has a chassis ever been such a good chassis in the face of so many changes?

For one, I find it hard to believe that the RB7 is faster with EBD and then the RB8 is also faster without EBD and with a stepped nose. In fact if I recall correctly they made some changes mid-season in 2011 and I recall Vettel saying those changes won’t affect the car and guess what “they did not”

But the RB8 does have an EBD. And to be honest – even a homebrew CFD solution will tell you that the stepped nose is a nothing. Try it (if you have home CFD software) – you’ll find it does nothing but create a little bit of local high pressure, but that’s it.

In fact if I recall correctly they made some changes mid-season in 2011 and I recall Vettel saying those changes won’t affect the car and guess what “they did not”

I don’t follow. Which changes are you talking about? Was it supposed to be a negative or a positive change?

Now the car is doing great with DDRS.

To be honest – a large part of it has been because of DDRS. Some people would go and say “hey, DDRS is only available in qualifying – so how’d they improve the race pace?” The thing is – they’ve been able to produce further rear bodywork changes thanks to the DDRS itself, and the way it interacts with the airflow from the bodywork and the diffuser. In essence, the DDRS has helped Red Bull upgrade their car.

Statistically speaking, even Newey should have gotten some things wrong in applying all those updates

Doesn’t mean it will happen. Try flipping a coin 50 times. I’m willing to bet you won’t get 25 heads and 25 tails.

When has a chassis ever been such a good chassis in the face of so many changes?

When has a basic Newey chassis ever been bad, changes or no changes? Look at 2009 – Red Bull were the fastest car even early in the season, if you take the Brawn away from the results – fastest in Melbourne, fastest in Malaysia – fastest in China, and so on. Without a double diffuser, without any fancy exhausts. Nada.

Look at Barcelona 2009 qualifying – on the most representative of test tracks, that car was beating the nadgers off the Brawn, and only lost out due to a bad start. In Barcelona 2009, without a double diffuser, was quicker than the Brawn with the double diffuser through the quick corners.

Going back to my valedictorian analogy – just because the teacher gives you a surprise test, and changes the test format as a surprise, and they still get 100% – that doesn’t mean they were cheating. It’s certainly possible they were. But it doesn’t mean they were.

Even if you were to look back – say 2008. The car just came alive at the high speed circuits.

You know – Newey actually IS smart. He’s not just king of the loophole.

What if you flipped a coin and got tails 45 out of 50 times in a row? Statistically it can happen but anyone who would ever think that is just simple luck when a few hundred million dollars are on the line?

I thought that EBD were ruled out in 2012.

There is no doubt that Newey is smart – no one’s disputing his intellect.

@freelittlebirds EBDs were ruled out in 2012, in their 2011 form. You couldn’t plant the exhausts on the floor like you could in 2011.

But McLaren, Ferrari, Lotus, Red Bull, Mercedes, Sauber, STR, Force India, Marussia, Caterham are all sending their exhaust gases to the diffuser (Williams tried, but can’t get it to work satisfactorily; HRT didn’t bother)

This is going to get very subjective but how often do we see Vettel or Webber lose control of the car in practice, qualifying, or the race the past 2 years? Yes, I know Canada 2011 but what about small moments where the car just loses traction.

@freelittlebirds the exhausts were massive on that design. It wasn’t the exhausts they were hiding, it was the tunnels.

And like I’ve said previously. Not losing control is a sign that the driver is driving well – just below the car’s limits, and not above it. It’s simple physics and vehicle dynamics – just below the limit is quicker than even a teensy bit over the limit.

@freelittlebirds These cars with exhausts feeding the diffuser are very very counterintuitive. If you lose traction, you slam on the throttle, for more exhaust gases to flow through. To be honest it’s not just the Red Bull – look at the McLaren for example.

@raymondu999
What are the chances that Vettel and Webber are the only 2 drivers in the field who can drive their cars within its limits in practice, qualifying and the race?

Do they have a record of constantly underdriving their cars at other constructors?

If we look at Alonso, Hamilton and Raikonnen we see numerous occasions where they lose control of the car or catch it before that happens.

We have essentially a 100% record of successful updates from Newey (while the regs are changing against RB’s favor) and 100% driving record to the absolute corner literally from the drivers. That’s without taking into account all the records the RB has shattered. If we were flipping coins, I’d be reaching to see if the coin actually has 2 different sides… If so, I would check it for weight distribution, then for metal composition, then for magnetic fields and so on and so forth before I concede that heads is the only plausible outcome.

@freelittlebirds non of this is correct :D
RBR drivers do as many mistakes as everyone else (except Grosjean and Maldonado maybe :P). If you are blind to them can’t help you.
I think I read an article in the summer that not every update on RBR worked but maybe I am wrong. I found Horner said for Autosport after Korea:

“We have been trying to get on top of understanding the regulation changes all year,” he said. “We have been pushing since Australia, but it has started to move in the right direction now.”

Not much of a proof for anything though.

Still, the only team with a streak of non working updates is Ferrari and there is a well known reason behind it. Lotus tried something very ambitious with their device but this is something no one else could make it work (Mercedes tried, too).

I dont like RBRs advantage, and this is an understement, BUT it is not like they can exploit loopholes, while others cant. They did the best job with the avaible resources, and the current set of rules. If they dont mind spending money and introducing upgrades that will be banned from the next race, it is their buisness. Every other team is allowed to do it, and should be. I think the problem is that the other teams are not brave enough, or dont have enough resources to do it.

About the spirit… It is obvious that the technical regulations exist to direct the engineers. If a new rule is introduced, it has is an intention to allow, or ban something. The wording cannot be precise, but I think at this level you shouldnt be able to say: “Oh, so you meant that, Im really sorry, we wont do it from the next race”. If you cant understand a rule AND its intention you shouldnt be in F1. If you pioneer something that has nothing to do with the regulations and their intentions, you let the FIA scratch their heads. It should work like this, but I know it cant. So while the FIA cant find a solution to force the intention of the rules on the teams, they should do everything to be the fastest, including this so called “cheating”.

So the main question is not how RBR can get away, but why the other teams dont try?

If we look at Alonso, Hamilton and Raikonnen we see numerous occasions where they lose control of the car or catch it before that happens.

What’s your point? That just means that at that specific moment in time they overstepped their car’s limits.

Honestly – you need to stop thinking about corrections as an indicator of anything. You can drive an HRT lap with absolutely 0 corrections as much as you can drive a messy RBR lap.

You don’t even have to look far behind – Mark Webber locked his inner front wheel just about every corner in Sector 3 Korea on his pole lap, and on his first Q3 lap Seb locked his fronts into T4 India, and then his rears into T6 India.

We have essentially a 100% record of successful updates from Newey

Where were you earlier in the season? Newey’s updates have only been successful in Bahrain, Valencia – and then Singapore and Korea.

That’s a record of 4 successful updates – out of a total 31 upgrade packages which have gone on to the car.

If we were flipping coins

Yes – 100% heads as a result is suspicious. But it is not illegal, nor impossible.